Question 1

Reliability

Research on animals
may provide information not available by other means, e.g. the
consequences of some surgical procedures.

However, in other
cases the information may not be of any practical use, for one or more
of three or more reasons:

(a) The mechanism
studied is not sufficiently relevant to the disease for which a cause
or cure is being sought (i.e. the experimental hypothesis is flawed).

Example: the assumption
that preventing formation of, or removing, senile plaques (SPs) in the
brain can prevent or cure Alzheimer's disease. Some researchers
dispute this, and SPs do not correlate closely with dementia.[1,2]

(b) It is impossible
to modify the mechanism being studied without causing severe adverse effects,
for example therapy-related leukaemia.[3]

(c) The mechanisms
are different between humans and other animals. For example,

(i) Researchers have
studied how to induce neuronal proliferation in day-old chicks by 'training'
them, despite the fact that adult humans learn by producing or reinforcing
synapses between neurons, not by producing new neurons. The research
was claimed to be relevant to human dementia.[4]

(ii) An area of the
brain specialising in spatial memory in humans was found to be in a different
position from that in monkeys.[5,6] This difference was discovered
through fMRI studies in humans.

"Similar symptoms
can have different causes in different species, so that false leads are
thrown up."[7]

Animal-tested drugs
usually fail to work in humans, and hundreds of thousands of humans die
every year from prescribed animal-tested drugs. Conversely, some
drugs which are effective and safe for humans are lethal to other animals.
For example, the injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera was banned for
about 20 years in the USA because it caused cancer in dogs and baboons,
but 20 years of safe use in other countries led to a reversal of the ban.
Penicillin would probably have been discarded if it had been tested on
guinea pigs, in whom it is highly toxic.[8]

Dr Ralph Heywood,
past scientific director of Huntington Research Centre (U.K.), stated
at a 1989 scientific workshop held at the Ciba Foundation that: "...the
best guess for the correlation of adverse reactions in man and animal
toxicity data is somewhere between 5% and 25%."

...the General Accounting
Office in the U.S. reported that between the years 1976 - 1985, of the
200 new medications introduced over that period of time, a full 51% were
either withdrawn from the market completely or else re-labelled, because
of severe side effects not previously noticed.[9]

“The history
of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We
have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans.”
Dr Richard Klausner, director of America's National Cancer Institute.[10]

“For every
30-40 drugs effective in treating mice with cancer, only one is effective
in people.” D.J.Galloway.[11]

Drugs prescribed
in Britain are suspected of causing over 19,000 adverse effects annually
- probably only one tenth of the true figure.[12] All of
these have been 'tested' on animals.

"...adverse
reactions to animal-modelled medicines are now the fourth largest cause
of death in America, accounting for two million people being hospitalised
every year - 100,000 of whom die."[13,14]

There are many reasons
for this non-extrapolability. For example, there are significant
differences between species with regard to many proteins, including enzymes
and receptors - the most common targets of drugs. An important such
protein is the cysteinyl leukotriene receptor (CysLT) (leukotrienes are
involved in inflammation). Human CysLT1 can be antagonised by the drugs
montelukast, zafirlukast, pranlukast and BAY u9773, whereas mouse CysLT1
is antagonised by a different drug: MK-571.[15] Furthermore,
the receptors are expressed in different organs in different species.

Even our closest
relatives have important biochemical differences from us. Tests
using the protein albumin show a variety of immunological distances between
humans and other primates, comparisons between primate forms of lysozyme
also show significant differences, and of course there are crucial genetic
differences as well.[16]

Another important
aspect of drugs is the time they take to be metabolised and eliminated
from the body - this is crucial to both efficacy and toxicity. It
often varies greatly between species.[8]

The animal testing
of agrochemical and industrial chemicals is a cruel and pointless exercise.
There is huge variation in the susceptibility of individual humans
to a given compound, depending on genetic predisposition, previous or
contemporaneous exposure to other chemicals and general health, including
stress levels. Stress increases the permeability of the blood-brain
barrier, allowing some chemical compounds - such as organophosphate pesticides
- to enter the central nervous system.[17] Thus animal
testing cannot predict the effects on humans and has led to the appalling
injustice of people being made seriously ill by these chemicals but unable
to obtain compensation because animal tests have 'proved' the chemicals
safe. Animal testing has protected the manufacturers at the expense
of the public.

It is absurd to claim,
as some scientists, politicians and other commentators do, that the cessation
of animal experimentation would stifle scientific progress. On the
contrary, it would free up resources for more effective methods, and also
staunch the efflux of able, compassionate students from the life sciences
which occurs due to the focus on animal experimentation (see 'Desensitisation'
in my answer to Question 4 and 'Regulatory bias and its basis' in my answer
to Question 5).

Acceptability

My view is that it
is unacceptable to inflict physical or psychological harm on an animal
which is not for its own benefit, whatever the potential
benefits to humans or other animals. I consider that the incarceration
of animals in cages and other containers is a harm in itself, and that
the keeping in isolation of social animals is cruel. I therefore oppose
these practices.

Suffering

I consider that animals
tend to suffer from being in captivity and from being handled in addition
to the suffering caused by research itself. The amount of suffering
depends mainly on:

the severity
of the procedures;

the sophistication
of the animal's nervous system and consequent sentience;

the degree to
which the animals' natural environment is or is not replicated in
its housing; and

how well the
animal or species is adapted to being handled or kept in captivity;
and

Question 2

GM animals do raise
new issues, a major one being the deliberate creation of a living creature
which is doomed to suffer, which is morally unacceptable. Creating
GM animals is also another step down the roads of commodification of animals
and reductionist genetics. Animals should not be treated as commodities
- they have intrinsic rights to be themselves and not to be specifically
bred for any kind of human use, whether by 'conventional' selective breeding
methods or by genetic modification. Genetic reductionism shifts
the focus of research yet further away from environmental factors, thus
failing to empower humans to take personal responsibility for their and
society's own health.

Environmental factors
include the genetic environment within an organism, and few diseases arise
from mutation of a single gene: genes influence each other's expression,
and illnesses, like other traits, almost always involve changes in the
expression of many genes. Additionally, individual genes
have a range of functions which often vary between species.

Xenotransplantation
is morally abhorrent and has led to appalling suffering, in which the
Government has colluded by various means including downgrading the official
severity of kidney transplant experiments by Imutran from 'severe' to
'moderate'. This information is available from the website www.uncaged.co.uk.

Xenotransplantation
also poses a serious threat to humans both individually and collectively
and, in the worst-case scenario, as a species. Non-human animals
have been the source of a large proportion of the most lethal diseases
in human history. Xenotransplantation would be likely to lead, sooner
or later, to the transmission of pathogens from the transplanted organ
to the human host. Mutation of such pathogens could lead to them
becoming lethally pathogenic and/or highly infectious, and hence their
spread throughout the human population.

Both genetic modification
and cloning have led to the birth of terribly deformed animals and thereby
to appalling suffering, both of the mutant offspring and, inevitably,
of the female animals forced to carry and give birth to them. These
practices are therefore unacceptable.

Question 3

Alternatives

Of the '3 Rs' I only
consider replacement to be acceptable, due to my objection to the harming
of animals. I support all effective research methods which do not
involve harm to animals which are unable to consent, i.e. all except humans.
In the case of humans, research must involve informed consent by
adults of sound mind.

I consider that
government funding should be diverted from animal research to non-animal
research, on the grounds that the latter is not only morally preferable
but also more likely to bring benefits to humans more quickly and less
likely to lead to adverse effects in humans. I understand that the Government
only budgets for about £250,000 for use in reducing the numbers
of animal experiments and that only a fraction of this is used to develop
non-animal methods. This is a pittance compared to the amount put
into animal-harming medical research. The greater accuracy and speed
of non-animal medical research will lead to more favourable cost-benefit
ratios.

Perhaps fiscal measures
could be used to encourage non-animal-harming research. The Government
could also grant monetary awards for concrete gains such as savings to
the NHS, perhaps establishing a competition for excellence in animal-free
research with a prestigious prize like the Nobel Prize.

There may also be
scope for Government to use economic instruments to favour charities which
fund non-animal medical research over those which fund animal-harming
medical research.

I believe that all
fields of animal-harming research can be replaced with 'alternatives'
and look forward to a time when non-animal-harming research is no longer
regarded as 'alternative', just as energy sources previously dubbed 'alternative'
are now more accurately described as 'renewable'.

The search for 'alternatives'
should not be overly focused on finding exact animal-free replacements
for existing/'conventional' animal methods but more on alternative approaches.
As stated in my answer to Question 1, the information sought from
a particular animal experiment may not be of practical use for human or
animal health, or the experiment may not represent the most beneficial
approach.

I generally support the alternatives recommendations of Dr John McArdle,
Science Advisor to the New England Anti-Vivisection Society.[1]

There is a plethora
of clinical and epidemiological data which is not being analysed and integrated.
This is a rich resource from which meta-analyses and databases must
be produced as a top priority. Universities and other bodies should
be encouraged and supported (e.g. financially by central Government, including
support for PhD students) to carry out this kind of research. The
rewards reaped in the form of a healthier and empowered population (thus
a reduction in NHS costs and the costs of lost working hours due to illness)
will make such research highly cost-effective.

Hospitals, general
practices and veterinary practices must be encouraged/supported to keep
rigorous records of treatment outcomes, incidences of illness and known
correlations, and to make these available for analysis.

Duplication

I believe that there
is a huge amount of duplication of research - not just that involving
animals - and sharing of information would reduce it. There should
be free and open publication of findings on the Internet. Health
is one of the global Commons and should not be treated as a source of
private and corporate wealth.

Patenting is a system
which militates against information-sharing and is being abused by some
individuals and institutions. Patenting in medical science should
only be allowed (if at all) for a final product, not for genetic sequences
or other biological entities.

Reporting of
research findings

Companies and scientists
must be prohibited from claiming 'imminent breakthroughs'. Such
claims are absurd: one cannot know what one is about to discover.
The practice raises false hope in people affected by distressing illnesses,
and it has to be suspected that it is often a ploy to gain funding.

One reason for unsatisfactory
reporting of research into drugs is the excessively close involvement
of drug manufacturers. As well as funding the research, such companies
frequently pay people to 'ghostwrite' the research articles in a way which
distorts the findings in favour of the drugs.[2] Thus there
need to be scrupulous checks conducted, as a matter of routine, to ensure
that the names of researchers and authors are correctly stated and that
all interests are declared.

Much published research
provides inadequate data on differences between the animal species used
and humans, such as degrees of enzymatic homology and interspecific variations
in elimination half-lives. This weakness applies equally to in
vitro work. Some published papers do not even specify from
which species a tested molecule came.

One such in vitro study specifies that one tested enzyme - TACE
- came from pigs but does not state from which species the MMP enzymes
- with which it was being compared - came.[3] It is odd
- for a piece of research addressing enzyme structure and activity in
such detail - to compare an enzyme from one species with a different enzyme
from a different species: confounding factors are likely to distort the
results; this would be avoided if exclusively human material were
used. The researchers then compared the effects of candidate drugs
on porcine TACE and in human whole blood, following which one compound
was tested on live rats and dogs. Yet at no point does the paper
address interspecific differences, as a result of which the research and/or
its publication may tell us little or nothing of practical use.
As it is research specifically directed towards drug development, practical
relevance is of paramount importance here.

Another study provides
some useful data comparing rats and humans with regard to size,[4]
and some papers provide information about molecular homology (regrettably
time constraint does not permit me to locate these at present), but this
is, from my experience, the exception rather than the rule. In any
case, size is a crude and inadequate criterion for comparison or extrapolation:
there are many other differences between species - of which I have
given some examples in my answer to Question 1 - which affect experimental
outcomes.

Unrecorded animal
use

While discussing
in vitro work, I must highlight a loophole in the law relating
to animals, viz. that numbers and types of animals bred and killed for
their tissues are not currently required to be recorded or published.
This is another example of animals being regarded as disposable
goods and is unacceptable. If resources were put, as a matter of
urgency, into creating human tissue banks for this purpose, and into setting
up effective and well-publicised systems for human tissue and body donation,
results from in vitro research could be more applicable to living
humans. At present, even when human cells are being tested in
vitro, the growth medium is almost invariably a serum from a different
species. Measures must be put in place to secure supplies of human
blood and other materials for in vitro research into human diseases,
and to use serum-free cultures where appropriate, e.g. in toxicity tests.
There are ethical as well as scientific reasons for this:

"FCS (foetal
calf serum) production involves conditions associated with high levels
of cruelty, pain and distress including, but not limited to, puncturing
the heart and draining all of the blood from unanesthetized animals."
[1]

One study which I
have examined used materials from six different species,
including both adult and foetal bovines![5] Bearing in
mind the fact that the researchers in this study and [4] were
testing substances commonly found in food, this is a prime example of
research which could have been conducted on humans and human tissue alone,
starting from epidemiological data.

Veterinary practices should be permitted and enabled to supply domestic
pets' biopsy tissue and bodies for veterinary research. Systems
to supply such research material have been set up elsewhere in the world,
and it is possible to ensure that they are not exploited: pet owners
have to give prior, informed consent and this delicate issue is addressed
sensitively through leaflets in the surgery.

Imaging is a rapidly-developing
field which shows enormous promise for medical research and practice,
and the Government must do everything possible to encourage its development
as an alternative to harming animals. Animals must not be used in
such development unless this can be done without causing harm, including
distress arising from captivity and restraint.

Question 4

Animal rights

I believe that animals
have an intrinsic right not to be deliberately or negligently harmed by
humans except in the case of a lesser harm to achieve a net benefit for
the animals concerned, just as is the case for humans. Arguments
that rights must be accompanied by duties or responsibilities are nonsensical.
We do not apply this criterion to infant or disabled humans. I consider
that all animals have rights, although I am less concerned about invertebrates
except for those with sophisticated nervous systems, such as cephalopods.
I consider that the latter should always be given the benefit of
the doubt as to whether they can suffer, in contrast to invertebrates
which only show reflex-type responses.

Animal emotions

I do believe that
many human emotions can be experienced by many other vertebrate species,
and that, as a general rule, the more sophisticated the nervous system
the more similar are such emotions. Emotionality is also influenced
by the habitual lifestyle of the species, especially whether it is a solitary
or social species and whether or not it nurtures its young. I doubt
whether invertebrates are capable of suffering to anything like such a
degree but would prefer to use the precautionary principle with regard
to more intelligent classes such as cephalopods. There should be
no research into animal sentience which may cause animal suffering of
any kind.

Desensitisation

I am uncomfortable
with deliberate harm being inflicted on any animal except in self-defence.
It concerns me that fostering an ability to ignore signs of distress -
even in an insect - or to harm it regardless of such responses is likely
to have a desensitising effect on the perpetrator, perhaps enabling him
or her to progress to harming more sentient creatures. It must condition
the experimenter psychologically to override the proper human quality
of compassion which should compel him or her to avoid or stop the harming
of living creatures. It is known that serial killers often start
their criminal careers with the torture and killing of animals.
Whilst I do not suggest that all scientists who harm animals have a propensity
to become murderers, the practice can have a brutalising effect, which
is detrimental to society. An example of desensitisation is reported
by Elena Maroueva, a former veterinary student in Moscow who observed
that, whilst her first-year contemporaries could not bear to watch frogs
being killed, they found such practices ‘amusing’ three years
later.[1]

The continuation
of harmful animal experimentation, both in education and in research,
gives a message to society that it is acceptable to commodify, hurt and
kill animals with impunity, even though the harm done to experimental
animals would constitute a criminal offence in almost all other situations
(with the exception of farming practices, 'pest control' and also, bizarrely,
the use of animals in 'sport'). I believe that the commission and
acceptance of such acts diminishes our own moral standing as a species.

Suffering is the
main criterion on which my objection to animal research is based;
commodification and brutalisation/desensitisation come a close joint-second
in my hierarchy of criteria for unacceptability.

It is spurious to
try to make a prior assessment of animal suffering against potential benefits
simply because it is the nature of research that one cannot know in advance
whether any benefits will accrue. Animal research invariably involves
a cost in terms of suffering but usually no benefit. As detailed
in my answer to Question 1, animal research has a tendency to also harm
humans. In contrast, research which does not harm animals is at
worst neutral in terms of costs vs. benefits.

Other types of
animal use

As an ethical vegan,
I object to all harmful use of animals, whether it involves killing or
injuring them, confining them, commodifying them or degrading them in
the eyes of humans or of other animals. Thus I am opposed to the
use of animals for food, clothing, sport and all other uses to which the
above criteria apply. This is not because the practices are 'unnatural'
but because they are unnecessary acts of harm against living
creatures, and humans have developed sufficiently to be able to avoid
committing such acts without detriment to themselves.

Companion animals

I do not oppose the
keeping of certain animals as companions ('pets') unless this involves
any of the kinds of harm listed above. Some transient confinement
is acceptable just as it is for children and other vulnerable humans,
but not habitual caging.

Our relationships
with cats and dogs as companions evolved mutually. Cats were attracted
by rodents to grain stores, and dogs were attracted to human settlements
by food, warmth and shelter. Cats provided pest control services
and dogs were also found to be useful to humans, for example by alerting
them to danger and by helping hunters. Proximity led to increasing
mutual respect and affection. Thus the relationships are not 'unnatural'
as some people claim but a form of symbiosis. Relationships between
humans and companion animals continue to benefit both partners, with the
humans gaining companionship, health benefits and a deeper understanding
of another species, and the other animals gaining food, shelter, warmth,
protection and pleasure from affectionate interactions. This is
not an abusive relationship or an example of commodification, as it involves
appreciation of the animal for its own intrinsic qualities, not the imposition
of force by one party on another, except in aberrant cases which are,
sadly, numerous.

Thus, as long as
harm is not caused, human guardianship of companion animals does not represent
'use' unless one also accepts that the non-humans use the human guardians.

When kept for any
purpose, animals should be provided with environments in which their natural
behaviours can be expressed and which do not cause them any distress.
To keep an animals in a cage for the whole of, or most of, its life is
unacceptable, unless it is necessary due to an infirmity. If the
physical and psychological needs of an infirm animal cannot be met despite
maximal effort to achieve this, it must be humanely euthanased.

REFERENCE

1. InterNICHE 'Testimonies:
Conscientious objection to animal use in education – testimonies
from twelve students', from website at http://www.interniche.org/

Question 5

Laws and regulations

It may be the case
that the UK has the strictest system of regulation of animal research,
but complacency is not merited. Social change involves reassessing
ethical norms generally towards greater compassion and respect for animals,
and scientific practice must keep pace with such change.

I do not consider
that current provisions for the assessment of animal welfare are adequate.
25 inspectors cannot possibly carry out the full range or magnitude of
inspections merited by the numbers of animals and procedures involved.
There has been a stream of exposés of cruelty to, and neglect
of, research animals over the past few years and very little change in
Home Office inspector numbers. Thus even if the regulations were
sufficiently stringent (which I dispute), enforcement
of them is not.

The current legal
situation requires and thus favours animal experiments for drug testing,
as it protects drug companies against litigation arising from adverse
effects. Thus the law must be amended to level the 'playing field'
between animal-tested drugs and non-animal-tested drugs (also see 'Choice'
in my response to Question 6).

While harmful animal
research continues (to which I am opposed), welfare assessments must be
conducted before, during and after projects. As we do not, and may
never, know how much animals suffer, the precautionary principle must
always inform our regulations, at least with regard to vertebrates and
cephalopods, when it comes to assessing their welfare.

As stated in my answer
to Question 2, I oppose the creation of GM animals and all other forms
of manipulating animals' genotypes. As long as GM animals continue
to be created, the processes should be subject to licensing. However,
I do not consider that current regulations are adequate for assessing
the welfare of currently-produced GM animals - let alone new breeds -
because they have not prevented the birth of severely deformed and severely-suffering
mutants and the attendant suffering of their birth-mothers.

Regulatory bias
and its basis

I consider that the
bodies which grant project licences are biased in favour of animal experimentation,
with qualified biologists favouring the practice outnumbering qualified
biologists opposing it. Thus decisions on whether research could
be done without harming animals, cost-benefit analyses, numbers of animals
to be used and the 'suitability' of each species are skewed to the detriment
of animals and, in many cases, to humans, as animal experimentation is
a wasteful use of limited funding resources and results in drugs which
kill hundreds of thousands of humans every year (see 'Reliability' in
my answer to Question 1 and 'Alternatives', 'Reporting of research findings'
and 'Unrecorded animal use' in my answer to Question 3 for more detailed
statements on this issue).

This imbalance reflects
a general one found in the biological sciences, which is a consequence
of more compassionate and independent-minded students being filtered out
of the field by mandatory harmful animal experimentation in higher education
and, in some countries, even in primary and/or secondary schools.
Those who survive the filtering process have usually become desensitised
to animal suffering and conditioned to the norm of commodifying animals,
creating a self-perpetuating vicious cycle of scientific inertia (also
see the 'Desensitisation' section of my answer to the previous question).
This loss of able and thoughtful students from such an important field
must be curbed by the removal of requirements to collude in the harming
of animals in education.

Publication of
findings/'costs' and 'benefits'

I would like to see
the publication of cost-benefit analyses, but have serious reservations.
Statistics can be, and routinely are, misleading, GDP being a notorious
example in the way that it presents work carried out to rectify environmental
damage as a gain, thus skewing the statistics against practices which
do not cause environmental damage.

However, open publication
of research findings, of illnesses and deaths caused by prescribed drugs
and of comparisons between illness and survival rates of people who have
undergone specific surgical procedures versus those for people who have
not, would be illuminating and highly desirable. Cost-benefit ratios
can only be estimated extremely roughly before drugs go to clinical trial,
and should be re-assessed after such trials and on an ongoing basis to
determine long-term outcomes. The findings of these re-assessments
should inform decisions on subsequent research proposals and should also
be able to be used to halt current research in the event of adverse findings.
Survival rates should always be explicitly defined. For example,
Verweij and de Jonge (2000) refer to a clinical trial finding that the
cancer drug topotecan slowed cervical cancer progression 'significantly'
in contrast to paclitaxel, but that the additional delay to progression
of the cancer was just 9 weeks. Many people, myself included, might
question whether causing illness in animals and then killing them in order
to develop such a drug was justified to produce such a small benefit,
especially when any adverse effects and quality of life in humans are
also taken into account.

Cost-benefit ratios
cannot be properly estimated at all with regard to more general medical
research. Furthermore, it is hard to argue reasonably that a new
washing powder or shampoo produces any benefit which can justify making
animals suffer. If a nation's economy depends on the unnecessary
and unsustainable development of new products of such a frivolous nature,
it needs a radical overhaul.

REFERENCE

Verweij, J. and de
Jonge, M.J.A (2000) Achievements and future of chemotherapy, European
Journal of Cancer, vol. 36, pp. 1479-87

Question 6

Information

The public should
be given detailed information about what is done to animals in the name
of research and what each piece of research is intended to achieve.
There are people, as was illustrated in a recent debate on the BBC TV
programme 'See Hear', who think that research scientists simply seek out
sick animals and try out cures on them!

Charities should
be legally required to reveal in their publicity materials whether donations
may be used to fund animal experimentation, so that people who object
to such practices can choose which charities to support.

Debate

Discussions on the
TV and radio tend to involve tedious repetitions of stock arguments in
favour of animal research, and some such programmes have seriously unbalanced
panels. For example, the BBC Radio 4 programme 'The Moral Maze'
on 8th December 2002 about animal experimentation featured four panellists,
none of whom had a fundamental objection to animal experiments!
Other science programmes tend to refer to animal research casually
as though it were not in any way questionable or controversial.

I want to see biologically-qualified
people debating the issues in a calm, civilised and open manner, covering
animal and non-animal methods in detail and assessing them honestly, in
well-chaired TV and radio discussion programmes which also present reliable
statistics. They should address the validation issue:

"All of the
traditional animal-based safety tests were never validated and would be
unlikely to pass the level of proof required of new in vitro
methods."[1]

My favoured model
would be some of the better TV programmes on the Hutton Enquiry. Animal
experimenters fearful of animal rights extremists could have their identities
concealed if necessary.

Trust

With regard to the
provision of balanced information about research involving animals, I
would not trust the words of representatives of, or shareholders in, companies
which carry out, fund or promote research. In order for me to trust
scientists, doctors or other experts I would require them to declare all
interests such as sources of past, present and potential future funding
for their work. I do not generally trust politicians on this issue
(or many others!), largely because pharmaceutical companies contribute
to party funding. As a science graduate and postgraduate student
in medical science, I cultivate a healthy cynicism in all matters, so
my trust or lack of trust for particular sectors of society is relative
and conditional, the latter quality depending on what I already know and
subsequently learn, and the former depending on previous experience of
the sector or individual. I prefer to hear both sides of a debate
before making up my own mind.

Labelling

Medicines should
be labelled to show not only whether or not they were developed using
animal research but also to reveal their ingredients, including a clear
statement as to which, if any, are animal-derived. It is pointless
telling ethical vegetarians and vegans, people with allergies and intolerances
and members of religious groups which prohibit the consumption of certain
animal products simply that a product has not been tested
on animals. It would also be helpful to be informed of how successful
a medicine has proved to be in the target species. If there is insufficient
space on labels, small leaflets should be produced to accompany products,
as is now routine for medicines.

As this consultation
is not just about medical research but also about animal testing of agrochemicals,
household products, toiletries, additives, etc., these and/or products
containing them should also be labelled both with regard to animal research
and animal-derived ingredients. I would not expect numbers or species
of animals to be stated, but obviously where manufacturers wanted to specify
these (e.g. to emphasise that they did not use vertebrates) they could
choose to do so. For myself, and probably many others, statements
about animal welfare and type of experiment would be irrelevant due to
our complete opposition to such experiments, but some people might want
this information. Measures would have to be taken to ensure that any such
statements were accurate. For example, Tesco has recently been taken
to task by animal advocacy groups over its promotion of Iams pet foods,
which are developed through laboratory animal research. Tesco claimed
in its promotional materials and responses to enquiries that its intention
was to enable customers to make informed choices, yet it failed to provide
information, requested by enquirers, about Iams's procurement of animal
research. Iams has itself stated: "By policy, Iams
only conducts research that is equivalent to nutritional or medical studies
acceptable on people." (pers. comm. 25.10.03) This statement
is highly suspect in the light of earlier Iams-sponsored studies exposed
by animal activists, in which animals suffered kidney failure and other
lethal outcomes.

CHOICE

Opponents to animal
experimentation are derided as hypocrites if they use animal-tested medicines
and treatments, yet the only options offered to us under the NHS are morally
unacceptable products and treatments - or nothing.

The British Government
claims to be committed to offering people choice, and is keen on encouraging/allowing
market forces to provide it. People are allowed to choose to undertake
activities whose hazardousness is well known, such as smoking, motor racing
and the consumption of junk food, so there is no logical or moral reason
why they should not be allowed to choose to use medicines and other products
and treatments which are not developed through animal research.
But current laws militate against this, and there appear to be moves to
remove even some of the current, limited choice for such people represented
by so-called 'complementary' medicines. My medical knowledge has
not prevented me from preferring to use herbs and medicinal foods with
a long history of safe human use rather than visiting the doctor or pharmacy;
indeed, the more I have learned the stronger this preference has become,
notwithstanding the Government's insulting claims that people opposed
to animal experimentation are unscientific or anti-science.

People should be
able to register preferences for non-animal-derived treatment with healthcare
providers. At present - especially in hospital - we are offered
no alternatives, our ethical and religious sensitivities being completely
disregarded. This means that a Hindu can be given a graft of bovine
tissue - an event which I understand has indeed happened and caused great
distress to the patient concerned.

If healthcare is
a universal human right, this lack of choice may be illegal.